The Return of George Soros

This is the name of the game—create a lot of smoke and hope the authorities light the fire by pressuring Abramoff to plead guilty to something.

The Washington Post is in its scandal mode, hoping to hype the Jack Abramoff affair into something that will threaten Republican control of the House in the 2006 elections. Then the Democrats could initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush. While this process unfolds, it would be wise for the public to consider the stories that aren’t being written or published. For example, whatever happened to convicted inside trader and billionaire currency speculator George Soros? He is the proponent of drug legalization who tried to buy the presidency for the Democratic Party in 2004. His other causes include needle exchanges for drug addicts, open borders, assisted suicide, voting rights for felons, abortion and homosexual rights.

Soros makes Abramoff, who spent about $5 million on political influence operations, look like a piker. Soros reportedly spent $400 million in 2004 on his network of foundations and non-profit groups. In reference to his more than $20 million campaign to defeat President Bush in 2004, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a formal Complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Soros had violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by failing to report significant expenditures.

Except for some payments to two columnists, Abramoff tried to influence politicians. Soros has a far more impressive record of influencing the press. Soros has put some of his massive fortune into press groups like Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and Center for Investigative Reporting. James V. Grimaldi, a Post reporter covering the Abramoff affair, is on the IRE board. These groups never subject Soros to scrutiny, except to strictly itemize how much money he is giving away. That earns him the title “philanthropist” or “financier,” but never “inside trader.”

In the latest chapter of the Abramoff affair, the Washington Post on December 31 ran a 3,100 word article by R. Jeffrey Smith about Abramoff arranging contributions to a non-profit organization linked to Congressman Tom DeLay. This followed a 4,000–word article on December 29 about Abramoff written by Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt.

One of the main points in the Smith article was that the group received money from a Russian source and DeLay voted for money for the International Monetary Fund, which was bailing out Russia. At the same time, DeLay opposed the IMF forcing Russia to raise taxes as a condition of receiving such assistance. Is there any evidence that DeLay’s votes or positions were somehow influenced by the Russian money to the non-profit group? No such evidence was presented.

But because the names of Abramoff and DeLay were linked in the same article, the impression was created that there was something sinister going on. This is the name of the game—create a lot of smoke and hope the authorities light the fire by pressuring Abramoff to plead guilty to something. Then we can anticipate countless more stories about the Abramoff affair right up to election day.

In order to understand the partisan game the Post is playing, you have to read between the lines of the story. Near the end of the story, Smith quoted one Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, “a nonpartisan watchdog group,” as offering an opinion about one aspect of the “scandal.”

All of these so-called “nonpartisan watchdog groups” actually have an agenda. Noble’s group is funded by the usual list of liberal foundations, including the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros.

This is one reason why you seldom read anything critical of George Soros. He funds some of the “watchdog groups” that supposedly monitor this “problem” of campaign financing for the public and the press.

But the cover-up gets more serious than that, especially because of his opposition to virtually all measures taken to curtail drug use on a national and global basis. Don’t expect to see, for example, any stories about the reported Soros connection to Evo Morales, the new pro-Castro, pro-cocaine president of Bolivia.

During the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, House Speaker Dennis Hastert made headlines by accusing Soros of having links to the international campaign to legalize dangerous drugs. He specifically mentioned a Soros link to the Drug Policy Alliance and the Andean Confederation of Coca Leaf Producers. Morales was a key figure in this latter group.

In response to the Morales win in the Bolivian presidential contest, Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance declared that “Coca deserves the same opportunities to compete legally in international markets as coffee” and “Perhaps the time has come to put the coca back in Coca Cola.”

The left-wing Washington Office on Latin America published a report in 2003 advocating accommodation of the coca producers in Bolivia. “It is crucial,” said the author, “that the U.S. government and international organizations permit the Bolivian government the necessary leverage to make key concessions” to the coca lobby. The funders of the study included the Open Society Institute.

There used to be a time when journalists here and abroad exposed the forces behind dangerous mind-altering drugs. In perhaps the most sensational case, journalist Veronica Guerin exposed the criminal gangs behind drug dealing in Ireland. She was gunned down and murdered in 1996. “I am simply doing my job,” Guerin said. “I am letting the public know how this society operates.”

In the powerful movie version of her life and death, in which actress Cate Blanchett plays the role of Guerin, she says about the drug trade, “Nobody is writing about it. Nobody cares.” She did so and paid the price.

Nobody is writing about it much these days either. It’s easier to write about Abramoff.

As for Soros, if you go to his personal website, the latest posting is an interview he gave National Public Radio last May, in which he claimed that he is only trying to spread democracy in the world—the same thing Bush is doing. He just opposes doing it by military means, he claims.

But the new book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, documents how the fingerprints of the Soros network were all over the rationale for the U.S./NATO military operation in Kosovo. It was an operation conducted without the approval of the U.S. Congress or even the U.N. that Soros loves so much. The book by veteran journalist Peter Brock thoroughly documents how the Clinton Administration waged an illegal and unconstitutional war on Serbia for the benefit of radical Muslims in league with Osama bin Laden.

On the matter of his conviction for inside trading, which occurred in 2002, he told NPR that he wants everyone to know that he is appealing that judgment and that calling him an inside trader is “unfair.” NPR reported that the label is being used by the “conservative” media against Soros. You can bet it won’t be used by the liberal press, which is in his back pocket. And that pocket is deep.